Campers Find Unique Brooklyn Campground

A map of the Floyd Bennett Field courtesy of the National Park Service.

When New Yorkers get out of town, they often go to a place covered with trees and dirt known as “the country.” When out-of-towners come to New York, they usually end up in a hotel — the Best Western or something. Now there’s one destination that can accommodate them all: A campground is growing in Brooklyn.

“I love it here,” Beverly Wong was saying toward sunset on an August Friday at Floyd Bennett Field. “I love going to the theater.”

She and her husband, Patrick Neeson, both in their 40s, and their five kids, 6 through 16, had spent a few days at the Jersey Shore and were towing their tent-camper home to Montreal, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“So my wife says, ‘Why don’t we go to New York?'” said Neeson, who was busy setting up rafter poles. The best hotel deal he found on the Internet for a gang of seven was $500 a night.

Then this came up: a $20-a-night campsite at the south end of Flatbush Avenue in the borough of Brooklyn. Neeson didn’t know it, but the campground had only just opened — on July 4 — as the first-ever spot where anybody anytime can rough it legally in New York City.

It’s also the only campground for the general public inside any American city’s limits that belongs to the National Park Service, the outfit that brings you peaks, lakes, canyons, geysers and glaciers, from the Everglades in Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska.